UFZA: TRAIDORA, Siyahkal, Grotto, Disgül
TRAIDORA:
TRAIDORA started as the solo project of Eva Leblanc, a Venezuelan-born trans-woman immigrant, living in the UK. She is a multi-disciplinary artist who finds time to play experimental music, collaborate with Eve Libertine of CRASS, as well as being active in the local punk scene. In 2023, she released a seven-track demo, since issued as 7”, of raw electronic-drums hardcore-punk sang in Spanish, bringing to the table her personal experience as a Latin American trans-feminist, living in an oppressive society. TRAIDORA has played relentlessly both in UK and abroad, with different line ups, but always bringing an uncompromising political hardcore punk to the stage. Against all odds, both to receptive and not-so-receptive audiences.
Fast forward to 2025 and with a steady line-up made up of four queer people, TRAIDORA enter Bear Bite Horse Studios to record their first full length. The result - heavily influenced by the hardest side of Latin American punk - is thirteen blasts of
sharp and blown-up crude hardcore punk. Sonically sitting somewhere between DROP DEAD, MASACRE 68 and LOS CRUDOS. With Eva singing in Spanish about morality, gender, borders, Palestine or local Mapuche struggles with a strong trans-feminist immigrant message.
https://traidorapunx.bandcamp.com
SIYAHKAL:
"Finally, SIYAHKAL delivers unto us their complete vision. "Days of Smoke and Ash," is the first full length from a band that has been dominating shows in Toronto for the better part of the past decade. The city's best kept secret. And what better a release to formally announce the relocation of the Static Shock Head Honcho, than the excavation of the city's most overdue LP?
From the opening notes of "Your Head In My Arms," SIYAHKAL unleashes absolute, stomping psychedelic hardcore perversion. Self-recorded, the thing sounds like a demon unleashed. Squalls of noise are smeared across a record of near-meditative, throbbing HC. It's an unrelenting, brutal album that would see any sane person running for the exits.
While the music itself is precise, intentional and pounding, the vocal delivery and its lyrical subject matter provide a deeper meaning. This isn't just a record to crack skulls to, it's an album loaded with political subtext. How does an artist reconcile their own exile? How do they engage with the caricatures that western psychosocial dominance makes of their beautiful home? When their own survival is at stake, what is the true meaning of justice? SIYAHKAL manages to produce something indebted as much to the likes of DESTINO FINAL or MOBS, as it is the Persian culture KG bleeds into it.
And the sentiments expressed here are not just Iranian, or Venezuelan, or Palestinian. SIYAHKAL's "Days of Smoke and Ash" reflects the reality of the world as this era comes undone. They've manifested something universal and urgent that blurs the boundaries of hardcore punk. When power attempts to distort you, the only option is to distort back. Let the walls of Evin, of Guantanamo, of Al-Hol, of Ofer crumble at the sounds of SIYAHKAL.
Women. Life. Freedom. Hold each others hands you fuckers."
(Greg Benedetto)
https://siyahkalpunk.bandcamp.com/album/days-of-smoke-and-ash
GROTTO:
HC PUNK - Canada
https://serpentsgallery.bandcamp.com/album/sg06-grotto-targeted-solution
DISGUEL:
Crust - Ibk
